Learning by Failing

An error when installing Mono with MacPorts

Lasse — Thu, 14 Oct 2010 21:46:53 +0000

Got this errpr when doing a

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$ sudo port install mono
---> Computing dependencies for mono
---> Dependencies to be installed: libgdiplus
---> Building libgdiplus
Error: Target org.macports.build returned: shell command failed
Log for libgdiplus is at: /opt/local/var/macports/logs/
_opt_local_var_macports_sources_rsync.macports.org_release_
ports_devel_libgdiplus/main.log
Error: The following dependencies failed to build: libgdiplus
Error: Status 1 encountered during processing.
To report a bug, see <http://guide.macports.org/#project.tickets>

The logfile said:

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:info:build ld: in /opt/local/lib/libsasl2.2.dylib, file was
built for unsupported file format which is not the architecture being
linked (i386) for architecture i386

libsasl2.2.dylib is in cyrus-sasl2 and apparently it was only x64-compiled.
To solve it do this:

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$ sudo port upgrade --enforce-variants cyrus-sasl2 +universal
---> Computing dependencies for cyrus-sasl2
---> Fetching cyrus-sasl2
---> Verifying checksum(s) for cyrus-sasl2
---> Extracting cyrus-sasl2
---> Applying patches to cyrus-sasl2
---> Configuring cyrus-sasl2
---> Building cyrus-sasl2
---> Staging cyrus-sasl2 into destroot
---> Computing dependencies for cyrus-sasl2
---> Installing cyrus-sasl2 @2.1.23_3+kerberos+universal
---> Deactivating cyrus-sasl2 @2.1.23_3+kerberos
---> Cleaning cyrus-sasl2
---> Activating cyrus-sasl2 @2.1.23_3+kerberos+universal
---> Cleaning cyrus-sasl2

then installing mono will succeed:

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$ sudo port install mono
---> Computing dependencies for mono
---> Dependencies to be installed: libgdiplus
---> Building libgdiplus
---> Staging libgdiplus into destroot
---> Installing libgdiplus @2.6.7_0+universal
---> Activating libgdiplus @2.6.7_0+universal
---> Cleaning libgdiplus
---> Fetching mono
---> Attempting to fetch mono-2.6.7.tar.bz2 from http://lil.fr.distfiles.macports.org/mono
---> Verifying checksum(s) for mono
---> Extracting mono
---> Applying patches to mono
---> Configuring mono
---> Building mono
---> Staging mono into destroot
---> Installing mono @2.6.7_0
---> Activating mono @2.6.7_0
---> Cleaning mono

Removing a field from a mongodb collection

Lasse — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 13:23:00 +0000

By using the mongo shell (mongo.exe in windows).

Lets say we save a couple of new objects into our “example”-collection:

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> db.example.save({FirstName: "Lasse", LastName: "Krantz", MiddleName: "Evald"})
> db.example.save({FirstName: "Karin", LastName: "Krook", MiddleName: "Elin"})
> db.example.find()
{ "_id" : ObjectId("4bb493d94917000000006c33"), "FirstName" : "Lasse",
"LastName" : "Krantz", "MiddleName" : "Evald" }
{ "_id" : ObjectId("4bb494804917000000006c34"), "FirstName" : "Karin",
"LastName" : "Krook", "MiddleName" : "Elin" }

MongoDB needs an unique id, so it inserts an _id-field since we didn’t supply one.
We want to remove the MiddleName field from all of our objects, so we do an update like this:

1	> db.example.update({},{$unset: {MiddleName:1}},false,true)

Lets look at the collection example again:

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> db.example.find()
{ "FirstName" : "Karin", "LastName" : "Krook",
"_id" : ObjectId("4bb499054917000000006c35") }
{ "FirstName" : "Lasse", "LastName" : "Krantz",
"_id" : ObjectId("4bb499124917000000006c36") }

The MiddleName field is gone!

The update-command arguments are (type db.example.update in the shell to see function):

function (query, obj, upsert, multi)
query: we passed in an empty query, {}, meaning all documents.
obj: updated object or $ operators (e.g., $inc) which manipulate the object, we used the $unset operator, meaning deleting a field. The value 1 is a dummyvalue and could be anything.
upsert: inserts a nonexisting object if it doesn’t exists. We just set this to false.
multi: apply update to more than one object, false is default and then it just updates first match in query, so we set this to true for updating all our objects.

Could not load type System.Web.Mvc.Html.ChildActionExtensions from assembly System.Web.Mvc, Version=2.0.0.0

Lasse — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 08:29:23 +0000

Yesterday a teammember got ‘Could not load type ‘System.Web.Mvc.Html.ChildActionExtensions’ from assembly ‘System.Web.Mvc, Version=2.0.0.0′ from this code:

1	<% Html.RenderAction<PagesController>(p=>p.Front()); %>

This is a method that resides in the ASP.NET MVC 2 Futures assembly, Microsoft.Web.Mvc, and the problem arised from having the ASP.NET MVC 2 Beta version installed of System.Web.Mvc. but the RC of the Futures-assembly.
Installing RC of MVC 2 solved the problem.
And today RC2 was released, so here we go again

StructureMap Exception : No Default Instance defined for PluginFamily IFormsAuthentication

Lasse — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 12:03:02 +0000

If you used the MVC-template in Visual Studio (in my case Azure/MVC2/VS2010) and has configured a StructureMapControllerFactory like this:

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public class StructureMapControllerFactory : DefaultControllerFactory
{
readonly Container container;

public StructureMapControllerFactory(Container container)
{
this.container = container;
}

protected override IController GetControllerInstance
(RequestContext requestContext, Type controllerType)
{
if (controllerType == null)
return base.GetControllerInstance(requestContext, controllerType);
try
{
return container.GetInstance(controllerType) as Controller;
}
catch (StructureMapException)
{
System.Diagnostics.Debug.WriteLine(container.WhatDoIHave());
throw;
}

}
}

and activating it in Global.asax.cs with an empty configuration (it will autowire the controllers):

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protected void Application_Start()
{
var container = new Container();
ControllerBuilder.Current
.SetControllerFactory(new StructureMapControllerFactory(container));
RegisterRoutes(RouteTable.Routes);
}

All works fine.. until you click [ Log On ]. Then you get the error message:

StructureMap Exception Code: 202
No Default Instance defined for PluginFamily IFormsAuthentication

It’s because the AccountController has two constructors, one default with no arguments, and one with two arguments: IFormsAuthentication and IMembershipService:

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// Comments below is from the MVC Template!

// This constructor is used by the MVC framework to instantiate the controller using
// the default forms authentication and membership providers.

public AccountController()
: this(null, null)
{
}

// This constructor is not used by the MVC framework but is instead provided for ease
// of unit testing this type. See the comments at the end of this file for more
// information.
public AccountController(IFormsAuthentication formsAuth, IMembershipService service)
{
FormsAuth = formsAuth ?? new FormsAuthenticationService();
MembershipService = service ?? new AccountMembershipService();
}

By default, StructureMap would choose the “greediest” constructor, and therefore it chooses the constructor with two arguments. The problem is that we haven’t told StructureMap what IFormsAuthentication and IMembershipService we would like to use.
One bad thing to solve our problem would be to tell StructureMap to use the default empty constructor:

1 2	// Bad design.. var container = new Container(x=> x.SelectConstructor(()=>new AccountController()));

AccountController will then create the default membership provider (the FormsAuthenticationService and AccountMembershipService is placed in AccountController.cs) :

1 2	FormsAuth = formsAuth ?? new FormsAuthenticationService(); MembershipService = service ?? new AccountMembershipService();

and totally defeat the purpose of lose wiring and a DI-framework. Our purpose must be to let the IFormsAuthentication and IMembershipService be pluggable.
We must tell StructureMap to use AccountMembershipService for IMembershipService and FormsAuthenticationService for IFormsAuthentication. However, AccountMembershipService has two constructors:

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public AccountMembershipService()
: this(null)
{
}

public AccountMembershipService(MembershipProvider provider)
{
this.provider = provider ?? Membership.Provider;
}

so we want to plug in a MembershipProvider also as Membership.Provider for the time being, this is the default Membership provider.
The configuration will then be:

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protected void Application_Start()
{
var container = new Container(config=>
{
config.ForRequestedType<MembershipProvider>()
.TheDefault.IsThis(Membership.Provider);
config.ForRequestedType<IFormsAuthentication>()
.TheDefaultIsConcreteType<FormsAuthenticationService>();
config.ForRequestedType<IMembershipService>()
.TheDefaultIsConcreteType<AccountMembershipService>();
});
ControllerBuilder.Current
.SetControllerFactory(new StructureMapControllerFactory(container));
RegisterRoutes(RouteTable.Routes);
}

And when it’s time, we can simply change our authentication mechanism.

Using fiddler with Azure devstorage

Lasse — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 13:06:50 +0000

If you need to inspect your developmentstorage traffic with Fiddler, then add DevelopmentStorageProxyUri=http://ipv4.fiddler to your connection string:

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>
>
key="AzureConnectionString"
value="UseDevelopmentStorage=true;DevelopmentStorageProxyUri=http://ipv4.fiddler" />
>
>

Using the CloudStorageAccount.FromConfigurationSetting

Lasse — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 12:57:54 +0000

If you get the error:

Unhandled Exception: System.InvalidOperationException: ConfigurationSettingSubscriber needs to be set before FromConfigurationSetting can be used
at Microsoft.WindowsAzure.CloudStorageAccount.FromConfigurationSetting(String settingName)

you need to add this:

1 2	CloudStorageAccount.SetConfigurationSettingPublisher((configName, configSetter) => configSetter(ConfigurationManager.AppSettings[configName]));

then you can do:

1	var azureAccount = CloudStorageAccount.FromConfigurationSetting("AzureConnectionString");

if you have this in your .config-file:

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>
>
key="AzureConnectionString" value="UseDevelopmentStorage=true" />
>
>

StorageClientException: One of the request inputs is out of range.

Lasse — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 09:00:58 +0000

If you get:
Microsoft.WindowsAzure.StorageClient.StorageClientException: One of the request inputs is out of range.
and inner exception is:
System.Net.WebException: The remote server returned an error: (400) Bad Request.
you probably have to check your table/queue/blob name (I got this when naming a queue with some uppercase characters).

You can read about the limitations in the article “Azure Details and Limitations – Blobs, Tables, and Queues“

System.Xml.Schema.XmlSchemaException: The targetNamespace parameter ” should be the same value as the targetNamespace

Lasse — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 07:29:39 +0000

Got this error after trying to validate a XML document against a XSD schema. XmlSpy didn’t complain, but the XmlSchemaSet Add-method did.
Don’t forget to send in the value of targetNamespace in the xsd as the first parameter (the msdn example here doesn’t use it, hence my error).
First, failing method, schemas.Add (the Assert.Fail is NUnit, this is test code):

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static void validate(XDocument xDocument)
{
var schemas = new XmlSchemaSet();
schemas.Add("", XmlReader.Create(Settings.ImportSchemaFile.FullName));
xDocument.Validate(schemas,(o,v)=>; Assert.Fail(v.Message));
}

Then when adding the targetNamespace from the xsd:

1	xmlns="http://upptec.se" xmlns:xs="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" targetNamespace="http://upptec.se" elementFormDefault="qualified" attributeFormDefault="unqualified">

it worked nicely:

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static void validate(XDocument xDocument)
{
var schemas = new XmlSchemaSet();
schemas.Add("http://upptec.se", XmlReader.Create(Settings.ImportSchemaFile.FullName));
xDocument.Validate(schemas,(o,v)=> Assert.Fail(v.Message));
}

But it smells.. so after refacoring and not using targetNamespace at all:

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static void validate(XDocument xDocument)
{
var validatingSchema = XmlSchema.Read(XmlReader.Create(Settings.ImportSchemaFile.FullName),(o,v)=>Assert.Fail(v.Message));
var schemas = new XmlSchemaSet();
schemas.Add(validatingSchema);
xDocument.Validate(schemas,(o,v)=> Assert.Fail(v.Message));
}

Building MassTransit with NAnt

Lasse — Fri, 29 May 2009 14:36:58 +0000

I’ve started playing with MassTransit and began with downloading the source code (using AnkhSvn).
It didn’t compile.. there was a SolutionVersion.cs file missing.
Instead of executing the long “saga” below, I quote the comment from Chris Patterson:

Or, you could just run build.bat in the main folder and be happy as Larry!

And be done with it… (the name “build.bat” should be an obviuos clue, how could I miss that).

About Larry ->.

Well enough, I did look closer at the MassTransit page, and yeah, use NAnt to build it and SolutionVersion.cs will be created. So, off downloading NAnt binary. Got suspicios of the old version, but it seems it’s ok.
Executed NAnt inside the MassTransit/BuildScripts (no args required), but got:

1	Invalid element <msbuild>. Unknown task or datatype.

Wot? That doesn’t add up. After a quick google, I learned that you have to download the NAntContrib binary and but these binaries in the NAnt bin-directory.
All well and fine! More MassTransit is coming (I’m struggling to understand MassTransit atm).

~~In short:~~

Download NAnt binary and extract somewhere.

~~Download NAntContrib binary and extract the contents of the bin-directory to NAnts bin-directory.~~

~~Open a prompt, cd to MassTransit/BuildScripts and execute “..\..\NAnt\bin\nant” (or whereever you have the NAnt bins). No need for paths or arguments.~~

~~MassTransit will now build from inside Visual Studio 2008~~

No connection could be made because the target machine actively refused it

Lasse — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 22:28:34 +0000

[Fiddler] Connection to localhost. failed.
Exception Text: No connection could be made because the target machine actively refused it

Ok, I must remember it this time, I’ve been down this road before!
If you get this TURN IPv6 OFF in Fiddler (Tools – Fiddler options inside Fiddler2).
Works for me.
But if you still have problems, do like Marcelo Ampuero comments in this post.

2.- Add a period (localhost./mywebapp)
3.- On vista disable ipv6 localhost on C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts, changing
::1 localhost to
#::1 localhost